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Can we leave Hitler out of this?

I'm in a tough spot on the subject of gun control. Many in my extended family — including my 85-year-old mom — are staunch supporters of the NRA. They are convinced that President Obama’s most cherished dream is to eventually send troops around to confiscate every firearm in the country. I think that’s ridiculous. We get around the dispute in the way most families do: We don’t talk about it.

I love my family and I won’t let any political differences get in the way of that. But as a way of venting, I will talk about it here. Again: Restricting private ownership of military-grade weapons does not equal tyranny. It is a way to make it more complicated for nuts to acquire the firepower necessary to kill dozens of people without reloading. Period. Look around: We have strict safety rules for cars and food and pharmaceuticals. We’ve long kept civilians from owning rocket launchers and machine guns and plastic explosives. Somehow the Republic endures.

Of all the arguments for limitless civilian arsenals, the one I find most exasperating is the knee-jerk reference to tyrant emeritus Adolph Hitler. In America, Hitler’s name comes up a lot more than Lincoln’s. He haunts zoning boards and parking commissions and state legislatures. The man is everywhere, Godwin’s Law notwithstanding. But over the last few years, Facebook has become his venue of choice.

The meme above is just the latest. Like most of them, it uses a grim photograph and a specious quote to support the idea that rampant gun ownership is the only thing dividing 2013 America from 1935 Germany.

I say “specious” because the quote is almost certainly false. While it has appeared a lot over the years, primarily in letters to the editor of various American newspapers, there is no historical documentation that Hitler ever said it. Even if he did say such a thing, concluding that Hitler’s views on gun control were even slightly pertinent to the power of the Third Reich betrays a serious ignorance of history. Hitler didn’t need to disarm his citizens; they were solidly behind him until the war started going south. That’s just one of the logical fallacies behind stuff like this.

It’s breathtaking how so many Americans are so willing to imagine the forcible overthrow of their democratically elected government, to see Nazis or Commies behind every administration they happen to dislike. But millions of private guns don’t do anything to protect us from tyranny; if that were true, Somalia and Afghanistan would be the safest places on earth.

Reasonable people can disagree on ways to cut down on the number of mass murders in this country. I get that, and I’m open to reasoned opinions. But for God’s sake, let’s try to keep Hitler out of it.

The second amendment crew are far more concerned about a hypothetical dystopian society where “they” are going to take our guns away than they are concerned about a current dystopian society where kids are collateral damage. If they ever do come, they will arrive as Hitler’s minions did, at 4AM, with stun grenades. Having an AR-15 replica would do little good to them anyway.

I’ve recently attempted to talk with both my mom and brother about this. But I quickly gave up because there is no logic behind their arguments – it’s all about how they feel.

With my mom, I tried the argument you used above – that we have long-standing bans on many types of weapons. She is convinced that any new ban is the top of a slipperly slope that leads to, you guessed it, a time when “they will come to take away our guns”. She joined the NRA a few weeks ago.

My brother is simply convinced that anything the president supports is automatically bad – even if it’s something that he (my brother) is in favor of himself. (Not that he favors gun control, of course.)

By the way, “tyrant emeritus” is just brilliant. It says it all. I’ll have to remember it.